Journalism & media
ddobbs | March 16, 2010
image Bill Waterson
Ed Yong, responding to a run of recent rumination about the nature and role of science journalism, ponders the value of the "This is cool" science story:
None of this is intended to suggest that "this-is-cool" stories are somehow superior to those explaining the interaction between science, policy and society, or what David Dobbs calls the "smells funny" stories. They are simply the stories that I prefer to tell. Individual journalists can specialise in one or more of these areas but across the science writing population, we ultimately need a mix of approaches.
Two points…
ddobbs | March 11, 2010Chicago Tribune recently banned (sensibly, it seems) the use of 119 cliched words or phrases in Tribune story. NPR blogger Ian Chillag, who apparently either did not get or badly misread the memo, promptly set about using all 119 in a single sentence . Jump the break ('read more") to revel in the whole thing:
In other news, stay tuned, because in our top story tonight, some really good (or bad) news: as expected, in a surprise move yesterday, informed sources say, a world class icon, diva, mother of all motorists, and famed undocumented alien, lauded for putting area residents at risk and…
ddobbs | February 3, 2010
I was thrilled this morning to learn that this humble, erratic blog was named one of Top 30 Science Blogs by Eureka, the new monthly science magazine recently launched by the Times of London. I find myself among some most admirable company, including giants, longtime favorites of my own, and a few blogs new-to-me-but-presumably-really-good-anyway.
Given my history of ambivalence about blogging, my sporadic rhythm, my not-best-practice of ranging far and wide, and my generally low traffic, I find this recognition a surprise, but a happy one. I feel a bit like I've been upgraded (possible…
ddobbs | January 31, 2010
Me (right) hypnotizing Carl Zimmer just before the Rebooting Science Journalism session at ScienceOnline 2010. It worked. Carl had planned to use his 5 minutes to just say, "We are DOOOMED." Instead he talked about duck sex.
I've been meaning for two weeks now to post on ScienceOnline 2010 and the Rebooting Science Journalism session, in which I joined Ed Yong, John Timmer, and Carl Zimmer as "unpanelists." Lest another frenzied week delay me further, here's my addition to the #scio10 #reboot corpus.
Journalists-v-bloggers is (almost) dead
Many at the conference, and pretty much everyone…
ddobbs | January 29, 2010Hits of the week:
Savage Minds (with a spiffy website redesign) asks Why is there no Anthropology Journalism?
Jerry Coyne takes sharp exception to both a paper and a SciAm Mind Matters article by Paul Andrews and Andy Thomson arguing that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation. Dr. Pangloss punches back. (NB: 1. I was founding editor of Mind Matters, but no longer edit it, did not edit the Andrews/Thomson piece, and don't know any of these people. 2. While my recent Atlantic article presented an argument for how a gene associated with depression (the so-called SERT gene) might be…
ddobbs | January 13, 2010
Tomorrow I fly to North Carolina for the ScienceOnline 2010 conference, or unconference, where on Saturday I will sit down with Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, John Timmer, and anyone else who squeezes into the room, to talk about rebooting science journalism. The obvious assumption behind the topic (if I can return to the titular metaphor) is that science journalism is such a mess that it needs not just cleaning up, but a wholesale restart. But "rebooting" is probably too mild a term for what most people think is needed; if we're to stick with digital metaphors, I'd to say the assumption is more that…
ddobbs | December 22, 2009My post of a few days ago on rebooting science journalism stirred more (and more interesting) discussion than I anticipated. After writing a very long response, I decided to just write a short response in the comments section. But once I'd done that, I thought, Well, maybe this should just be its own post. So here it is.
Vaughan Bell rightly complains about the journalistic convention of the obligatory quote. I'm with you on this, Vaughan. Good quotes can enrich a story, leaven its texture to provide some variety for the reader, articulate contrasting views, or give insight into a person's…
ddobbs | December 18, 2009
Until the digital age, content was scarce. It wasn't scarce because people didn't create it; it was scarce because it required an investment to distribute it. That's no longer true. Anybody with an Internet connection can make anything they write (or snap or video or sing) available to anybody else with an Internet connection. For just about free. That's just one reason -- among many -- why the amount of content choices available to everybody has mushroomed in the past 15 years.
When the supply of something goes up faster than demand, the price of the something drops. Or, put another way,…
ddobbs | December 18, 2009
I wanted to rig up an electrified fence around the falsehood to keep the producers from sneaking back to it
via blogs.discovermagazine.com
Carl Zimmer on just how damned bad much science TV is. I've not advised programs, as Carl has, but the times I've seen subjects I'd written about covered on TV -- DBS for depression, and Williams syndrome, which I'd written about for the Times Mag and both of which were subsequently covered by 60 MInutes -- the TV results were truly appalling. And that was the hallowed supposedly best-of TV 60 Minutes.
It's nice when you see it done better. Too bad it's…
ddobbs | December 17, 2009At the ScienceOnline 2010 conference next month, I'm going to be on a panel about "Rebooting Science Journaiism," in which I'll join Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, and John Timmer in pondering the future of science journalism. God knows what will come of it, as none of us have the sure answers. But that session, as well as the entanglement of my own future with that of science journalism, has me focused on the subject. And two recent online discussions about it have piqued my interest.
One was the reaction, on a science writer's email-list I'm on, to a recent Poynter interview with Times science…
ddobbs | November 5, 2009
By way of demonstration, the group plugged in stats from the Oct. 11 playoff game between the Angels and the Red Sox:
BOSTON -- Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.
Guerrero drove in two Angels runners. He went 2-4 at the plate.
via mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
ddobbs | October 21, 2009"Book Launch 2.0" This kills me -- but maybe just because I've written books. (Oh yeah -- the links to the books. First two here. Reef Madness here. Buy 'em. Read 'em. They're better than the stuff you're reading now.)
This video should follow or be followed by Ellis Weiner's "Our Marketing Plan" from the New Yorker:
Once we get back from Frankfurt, weâd like to see you on morning talk shows like the âTodayâ show and âThe View,â so please get yourself booked on them and keep us âin the loop.â If Iâm not hereâwhich I wonât be, since after the book fair I go on vacation for two weeksâjust…
ddobbs | September 24, 2009[Note: An update from 25 Sept 09 is at bottom]
Here's a sad mess. It seems a
potentially important finding -- that getting a seasonal flu shot might
increase risk of contracting the swine flu -- is being sat on by a
journal, with the authors forbidden from talking about it, until they
get through the slo-mo publishing process.
The finding may or
may not be accurate. But as it regards an important issue, it needs to
be vetted and discussed openly, with the data at hand, as soon as
possible. But it's not.
This is a tricky situation, to be
sure. There are, at least theoretically, both good and…
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates.
Tara Smith explains why she'll be getting her kids their (seasonal) flu vaccines. Revere does likewise
Daniel Menaker, former honcho at Random House, defends the midlist. (Where was he when my book was getting so much push?)
Just in case you missed it, lack of insurance is killing 45,000 people a year (Times) in the U.S. This doesn't include preventable deaths among the underinsured (like yours truly, who is sitting on some surgery that he'd rather put behind him). You can download the…
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
The swine flu triage tent at Dell's Children's Medical Center, in Austin, Texasphoto: Ralph Barerra, Austin American-Statesman
I can't keep up with the flu news. (If you want to, best single bet -- the wide net -- is Avian Flu Diary.) But as the World Health Organisation meets in Hong-Kong to discuss, among other things, swine flu, here are a couple that make good follow-ups to my Slate piece on how adjuvants gobble up vaccine antigen supply:
WHO pushes for worldwide swine flu vaccinations (hoping to vaccinate 3 billion) -- despite that overall supply will fall short .
The U.S. (and some…
ddobbs | September 21, 2009 In the intro to his self-published (on Lulu.com) collection of blog posts, The Wreck of the Henry Clay, New Yorker contributor Caleb Crain sums up nicely the anxieties shared by at least one other writer-with-blogging-addon about blogging, and, by extension, about self-publishing books. Which I may just do myself soon -- a collection -- because I CAN. Ellipses are mine.
I came to blogging ... as a veteran of print.... [and so] came to blogging nervous about losing what footing I had there... The quandary: If I wanted to communicate an important discovery, shouldn't I write it up formally,…
ddobbs | September 14, 2009In an intriguing essay in the Atlantic, Benjamin Cohen argues that the blogosphere, in which the top 50 blogs account for 42% of all blog traffic -- and 21 of those blogs are owned by outfits like the Times, ABC, AOL, and CNN -- is looking more and more like traditional media in its economic and social structures.
Almost everyone weighing in agreed that blogging has become more corporate, more ossified, and increasingly indistinguishable from the mainstream media. Even Glenn Reynolds had a slight change of heart, admitting <a href="http://ideas.theatlantic.com/2009/06/…
ddobbs | September 10, 2009Oh lordy, this is not good: The Times reports that up to 11% of the articles in leading med journals were writtne at least partly by ghostwriters. Via Gary Schwitzer at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/2009/09/who-you-gonna-c.html Posted via email from David's posterous
ddobbs | August 19, 2009Well here you go. An 11-year-old interviews Obama -- and if I may say so, does quite a bit better than some of his journalistic elders.
Here's the vid, and some apt commentary from Tapped:
Hey, remember Damon Weaver, the 11-year-old who interviewed Joe Biden back in September? Well, he finally scored a sit-down session with Barack Obama yesterday.
Among the topics discussed: ways to improve school systems affected by budget cuts, Obama's attitude toward his critics, mangoes, basketball. Things not mentioned: the communist end of days, enchantment, swim trunks, death panels.
--Alexandra…
ddobbs | August 2, 2009
I just finished reading Erica Goode's Times story on the suicides of four soldiers who served together in a small North Carolina-based Guard unit in Iraq from 2006 to spring 2007. This is a witheringly painful story. Goode, who has done quite a bit of science writing as well as substantial reporting from Baghdad, tells it with an unusual freshness of perspective and clarity of vision.
She starts where I suppose she must:
On Dec. 9, 2007, Sergeant Blaylock, heavily intoxicated, lifted a 9-millimeter handgun to his head during an argument with his girlfriend and pulled the trigger. He was 26…